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Cryptocurrency prices moved higher on Tuesday after Hong Kong’s securities regulator announced it will allow retail trading of certain crypto assets starting June 1.

Bitcoin rose 1.7% to $27,293.64, according to Coin Metrics. The largest cryptocurrency has been trading in a small range throughout May, struggling to break meaningfully above $30,000 but staying above $25,000. Ether advanced nearly 2% to $1,851.91.

Late Monday night, Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission said it would allow retail investors to trade certain crypto assets beginning next month on registered trading platforms. The move was widely expected, with the announcement marking the end of a request for public comment it put out in February on its proposed regulatory requirements around retail trading in crypto.

The new guidelines are part of a broader effort of Hong Kong’s to become a global crypto hub. That ambition is in sharp contrast with China, which banned crypto trading in 2021, as well as the U.S. where the regulatory stance toward crypto has turned hostile since the collapse of FTX.

“This news doesn’t mean that a flood of retail buying power will enter the market at the beginning of June. … We could see some volume uptick in June, however,” said Noelle Acheson, economist and author of the “Crypto is Macro Now” newsletter.

Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission has already licensed two digital asset platforms, OSL and Hash Blockchain, and it’s likely some are already actively trading offshore, Acheson said.

Owen Lau, an analyst at Oppenheimer, called Hong Kong “pretty aggressive” for trying to become a crypto hub.

“It will continue to capture the attention of the community and attract more firms to set up offices in Hong Kong,” he said. “It is hard to gauge the exact impact but it has a long-term effect on capital flow and talent movement.”

Both crypto assets have struggled to make meaningful moves in either direction in May. While the market has been lacking in big catalysts and investors are closely watching the debt ceiling negotiations, trading has been relatively still and bitcoin has returned to behaving like a risk asset.

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Microsoft hit with SharePoint attack — one version still vulnerable

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Microsoft hit with SharePoint attack — one version still vulnerable

A Microsoft store in New York, US, on Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. 

Jeenah Moon | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Microsoft has warned of “active attacks” targeting its SharePoint collaboration software, with security researchers noting that organizations worldwide stand to be affected by the breach.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said Sunday in a release that the vulnerability provides unauthenticated access to systems and full access to SharePoint content, enabling bad actors to execute code over the network.

CISA said that while the scope and impact of the attack continue to be assessed, the agency warned that it “poses a risk to organizations.”

Microsoft late Sunday issued fixes for customers to apply to two versions of the SharePoint software. Another 2016 version remains vulnerable and the company said it is working to develop a patch.

Researchers at Palo Alto Networks said the hack likely reached thousands of organizations globally.

“The exploits are real, in-the-wild and pose a serious threat,” they added.

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CNBC has reached out to Microsoft for additional comment and information.

In an alert on Saturday, Microsoft said the attack applies only to on-premises SharePoint servers, not those in the cloud like Microsoft 365. SharePoint software is commonly used by global businesses and organizations to store and collaborate on documents.

The vulnerability is especially concerning because it allows hackers to impersonate users or services even after the SharePoint server is patched, according to researchers at European cybersecurity firm Eye Security, which said it first identified the flaw.

SharePoint servers often connect to other Microsoft services such as Outlook and Teams, meaning such a breach can “quickly” lead to data theft and password harvesting, Eye Security researchers said.

Separately, Alaska Airlines briefly halted its ground operations for about three hours on Sunday due to an IT outage. It lifted the ground stop at roughly 2 a.m. EST, the carrier said in a statement.

It was unclear whether the outage was related to the SharePoint attack.

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CoreWeave stock climbs after company announces $1.5 billion bond sale

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CoreWeave stock climbs after company announces .5 billion bond sale

Michael Intrator, Founder & CEO of CoreWeave, Inc., Nvidia-backed cloud services provider, reacts during the company’s IPO at the Nasdaq Market, in New York City, U.S., March 28, 2025. 

Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters

CoreWeave stock rose more than 7% after the renter of artificial intelligence data centers said it plans to sell $1.5 billion worth of bonds.

The company said in a release that the notes, due in 2031, will use the capital for general purposes, such as paying off debt.

In May, the company announced a $2 billion debt offering plan that sent shares soaring 19%. At the time, CNBC confirmed that the debt was five times oversubscribed. Last week, Coreweave shares rallied after the company announced a $6 billion AI data center project in Pennsylvania.

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CoreWeave, whose biggest clients include Nvidia and Microsoft, has more than tripled in share price since its March debut on the Nasdaq.

In its IPO prospectus filing, CoreWeave said that it was “one of the largest private debt financings in history and signals the confidence that debt investors have in funding our company to build and scale the next generation AI cloud.”

Some investors have raised concerns about the company’s debt and the sustainability of demand for its products. In May, CEO Michael Intrator defended CoreWeave’s spending plans and said it is meeting major client “demand signals.”

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CoreWeave CEO Intrator: $6 billion AI data center investment shows depth of demand for our services

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This crypto treasury firm is vying to be the MicroStrategy of ether–but with a focus on generating yield

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This crypto treasury firm is vying to be the MicroStrategy of ether–but with a focus on generating yield

Jaque Silva | Nurphoto | Getty Images

The latest crypto treasury company is set to hit the public market with an ambitious plan to build the largest public vehicle for institutional exposure to ether.

The Ether Machine will begin trading on the Nasdaq Monday through a merger with blank check company Dynamix Corporation. Andrew Keys, the co-founder and chairman of the new company, has committed about $645 million in an anchor investment. The entity is backed by crypto investors 10T Holdings, Electric Capital, Pantera Capital and more. Once the merger is complete, it will trade under the ticker ETHM.

The company is the latest in an emerging cohort of new entities vying to become the MicroStrategy of Ethereum by replicating the bitcoin proxy’s successful accumulation strategy, but around ether, the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, rather than bitcoin.

Keys’ company plans to differentiate with a focus on yield generation through “staking” rather than simply buying and holding the ether. Staking is a mechanism for generating yield by contributing to network operations around security and transaction processing.

By purchasing ether from a crypto exchange or buying shares of an ether ETF, investors would get exposure to the coin’s price, “but without access to the dividend,” Keys explained.

“Ether produces yield if it’s properly managed,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Monday. “The ETFs right now don’t generate yield because they don’t enable staking … we’re able to enable staking and we’re able to do other additional risk management on top of that.”

The largest beneficiary of the GENIUS Act is ethereum: The Ether Machine Chairman Andrew Keys

On Thursday, BlackRock filed with the SEC to include staking to its popular ETHA ether ETF, which just logged a record week of inflows.

The ability to stake makes ether a “more productive” asset than bitcoin, according to Keys.

The Bitcoin network “has one asset on it, bitcoin, that can be moved from peer to peer, but Ethereum can tokenize any asset,” Keys said. It’s “able to embed any type of digital asset – a bar of gold, a barrel of oil, a stock, a bond, a derivative – into digital legal agreements, and in doing so, you’re able to expedite the velocity of money. You can have employment contracts that get paid by the minute, as an example.”

Shares of Dynamix jumped 30% in premarket trading.

The Ether Machine follows Bitmine Immersion Technologies – the company newly chaired by Fundstrat’s Tom Lee and more recently backed by Peter Thiel – in its ether treasury ambitions. Pantera was also a backer of Bitmine.

Also this year, SharpLink Gaming, whose board is chaired by Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin, also initiated an ETH treasury strategy; and Bit Digital recently exited bitcoin mining to focus on its ETH treasury and staking plans.

Ether has taken the spotlight in crypto from bitcoin in recent months as investors anticipated the stablecoin bill known as the GENIUS Act would be signed into the first major U.S. crypto law, which President Trump did Friday. The regulatory clarity should benefit institutions and brands becoming more interested in tokenization, which includes stablecoins, most of which are issued on the Ethereum network.

Ether has doubled in the last three months and last week, ether ETFs posted a record $2.18 billion in weekly inflows.

Don’t miss these cryptocurrency insights from CNBC Pro:

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